'Going To Make America Safer': President Signs $95 Billion Foreign Aid Package

The United States Senate put the finishing touch Tuesday night on a $95 billion foreign aid package that supporters say sends a message to the world that America is “still the beacon for freedom.”

The package features military assistance for Ukraine and Israel and passed with strong bipartisan support, including the support of Oklahoma Senators Lankford and Mullin.

It was eight months ago, in August 2023, when President Biden first began urging Congress to pass more aid for Ukraine. In October, shortly after Hamas's surprise attack on Israel, he proposed combining it with aid for Israel and Taiwan. The resulting aid package traveled a very bumpy road, took lots of detours, and endured many changes, but it crossed the finish line Tuesday night on a vote of 79-18.

Less than 24 hours later, President Biden had already signed the national security supplemental into law.

"It’s going to make America safer; it's going to make the world safer," the President told reporters at the White House.

Almost two-thirds of the bill's funding, about $61 billion, goes to support Ukraine, supplying the embattled nation with badly needed weapons and ammunition while replenishing U.S. stockpiles.

"It’s not trying to support everything in the Ukrainian government," said Sen. Lankford (R-OK) in an interview Tuesday, "it’s trying to say, what can we do as an ally to be able to walk alongside of you while you’re trying to be able to defend yourself?"

The $26 billion that's in the bill for Israel includes more than $9 billion in humanitarian aid and funding to shore up Israel's overworked missile defense system.

"Everyone focuses on Iran’s attack from a week ago where 330 different missiles and drones came at them," said Lankford. "They’ve had 12,000 in the last six months, we need to stand with Israel."

The bill includes about $8 billion for Taiwan and allies in the Indo-Pacific who are wary of China and forces the Chinese tech firm ByteDance to divest its popular TikTok app in the U.S. or be banned here.

"Passing this national security package goes beyond meeting an obligation to our allies," said Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) in a statement released after the vote. "In fact, it’s squarely in America’s best national security interest."

Neither Mullin nor Lankford say the bill is perfect: "What’s left out is the obvious, our own border security," said Lankford.

Senator Lankford spent months negotiating on behalf of Senate Republicans to get border reform into the supplemental, only to see his own GOP colleagues ultimately kill it for mostly political reasons. He says he was not willing to do the same to the aid package.

"I can’t, in good conscience," Lankford explained, "say to the people of Ukraine, 'Just die and we’re not going to help you', or to our friends in Israel, 'Just be run over by terrorists, we’re not going to help you.'"

Some of the Republicans who voted against the aid bill cited the lack of a border security element as a key reason. They were some of the same Senators who also voted against Lankford’s border security deal in February.